B12 Oil Control Rings soak ?

[philip B]

Mazdaspeed 2012 bought from car max with 70k miles on it. Put about 25k miles on it so far so I’mat 96k miles right now. Bone stock up until now with added mods listed done around the 90k miles mark.

Before it was heavily modded, on one day about a year and a half ago I was driving and pulled up to the gas station to check hot oil level waited about 5-10min for oil to drop down to oil pan checked oil and it was below the min mark at the bottom of the dipstick. Panicked, I rushed doing research and misread a couple forums of the dip stick being hard to read whatever so I just sent it. After some learning I realized I was driving on low oil until the I did next oil change and I was stupid to dismiss it and could have done some severe engine damage.

So the past 2 oil changes i have kept tabs on the oil level. I no longer drive it as a daily since I have a work truck. It consumes about half a quart every 500-600 miles. Given that it’s been doing this before and after mods aka oil catch can/oil restriction banjo bolt and no heavy blue gray smoke coming from the exhaust like at all even with cat-less I don’t think it’s turbo seals I also check the OCC every 1,000 miles and I get about less than a 1/4 of oil out of it when draining it. I had the down pipe off and inside of the turbo on exhaust side just looked like black soot. Compressor side of turbo and turbo inlet pipe had but a slight film of oil but not enough to create a drop of oil. When I was removing the cats and upgrading the down pipe I did not see any visible leaks as well. Spark plugs seemed fine just your normal wear and tear no oil deposits. So my educated guess with my compression test being 180-180-175-180 that it could be clogged oil control rings besides a cracked head gasket and a b12 soak would be a good step to take and puttin in some thicker wieght oil.

On that note I’ve read and watched YouTube videos on doing a 24 hour b12 soak and I’m a little confused on the procedure.
When starting out, do the valves need to be level with each other or that doesn’t matter just pour b12 in? And how much b12 do I pour in each cylinder?
Do I need to crank the engine by hand when turning the valves over after it soaks every 6 hours or can I crank it with the key in the ignition with spark plugs removed of course? Do I leave spark plugs in while they soak?
After soaking process do I let it idle for 20 min and go for a 20 min drive then change oil? After how long do I change oil again to make sure all the contaminated oil with b12 is flushed out?


Pictures below are before and after 500 mile of driving hot oil level check.

mods-
.Grimmspeed EBCS 3 port mode.

.Injectors Cleaned by RX injectors before tuning process began.

.Valves soaked and cleaned with b12 and vaccumed before tubing began.

3" Exhaust Cat back titanium tips -ULTIMATERACING

. EGR Delete w/ block of plate -DAMONDMOTORSPORTS

. Oil Catch Can vta- DAMONDMOTORSPORT

. High-pressure Fuel Pump Internals/e85 gasket kit combo -CORKSPORT

. Spark plug replaced/ LTR6BHX .26 gap -AUTOZONE

. Turbo Oil Restrictor bolt -DAMONDMOTORSPORTS

.PCV plate upgrade -DAMONDMOTORSPORTS

. Rear motor mount -DAMONDMOTORSPORTS

. Dual VTA Bypass Valve -CORKSPORT

. 3.5” Downpipe cat-less -CORKSPORT

. 3.5-inch Mazdaspeed 3 Power Series Intake System -CORKSPORT

. TMIC Top Mount Intercooler -CORKSPORT

.VCTS deleted completely plugged intake manifold hole.

.Software using Versatuner/Damond tuned

.oil pennzoil 5w-30

.Corksport injector seals installed

.Compression 180,180,175,180 after new injector seals

 

[Enki]

Why you doing hot oil level checks? I've always done mine the morning after I've driven it.

 

[philip B]

Mandan

Why you doing hot oil level checks? I've always done mine the morning after I've driven it.

I did do both. Cold check was worse like on the minimum dot.
Thought hot was always the proper way on checking engines oil level because of oil molecules expanding when heated. Read that somewhere on this forum.

 

[Enki]

*Shrug*
Never had any issues, but I also have a BSD so it holds an extra quart.

Edit:
You gotta be like way over max for it to start smoking and shit. Speaking from experience.

 

[Easter Bunny]

Always check your oil cold. Check your manual. There is a lot of oil that gets pumped up into the head that has to drainback

 

[Awafrican]

Always check your oil cold. Check your manual. There is a lot of oil that gets pumped up into the head that has to drainback

sorry the manual says otherwise
"warm up engine to normal operating temperature, turn it off and wait atleast 5min"

 

[Easter Bunny]

Shit that's news to me

Not like I check my oil anyway. That's not entirely true I make sure some comes out when I drain it

 

[Enki]

2.0 and 2.5 Skyactiv-G...Not sure if the won/pu manual is different

 

[Awafrican]

2.0 and 2.5 Skyactiv-G...Not sure if the won/pu manual is different

second page (image) had the 2.3, this is the gen2 manual I posted. I don't have gen1 manual to cross check could probably find it online

 

[philip B]

Well either way when that one time a was just checking oil level at around 4000 mile mark oil level was like on the bottom tip below the min mark I tried for an hour to understand what I was seeing was actually real.
So I changed the oil had only about 4.5 quarts come out and yes I let it drain for quite awhile and that’s all I got. Which is why i was barely seeing any oil residue on my dipstick when I was checking oil level and somehow the car did not seem to care lolz, drove fine.
To confirm I just drove 500 miles and had to pour in about half a quart to be up to the max line where I was at originally, lost a little over a quart in 500 miles.
After being tuned it’s going to want to eat more oil now more than ever. It may have progressed worse as I drove the car with only 70k miles to where I started noticing it burning more oil than usual which to me is too low of a milage to be eating a quart every 1000 miles but maybe I’m overthinking it but it seems a nice b12 clean in the cylinder heads would help just like how it’s regular maintenance now to do an intake valve cleaning and on top of that my injectors I sent to RX Injectors the report I got back was atrocious, gummed up for sure not saying it did anything to oil consumption but just wear and tear items.
With engine parts used a lot like these I can only imagine what the oil control rings look like.
Maybe an excuse for forge internals nah jk but next is the turbo goes out and I get a bigger turbo. We drive on.

 

[Enki]

Couple of things:
1. You should be wiping the dipstick and doing another check, that way you can get a readable pull on it. If the oil is vertically only covering half the stick, that means that there's oil INSIDE the dipstick tube draining out, which may also suggest some crankcase pressure issues.

2. Yeah, it's going to sound and drive just fine with low oil; it's when it gets too low that it makes the not fine, expensive sounds.

3. The tuning generally has nothing to do with oil consumption, only the hard parts matter for this (piston rings, PCV, turbo seals and drain, etc).

4. I've never personally heard of anything short of media blasting the intake vales doing anything for this platform. B12 won't magically fix your ring sealing issues, and also won't get the intake valves clean.

5. Not real sure how injectors, which experience combustion temps at the tip and spray fuel at 1800 PSI can "gum up..." Sure, cleaning them is fine, but there's nothing in there that's "gummy."


Anyways, I'd start looking at crankcase evac (or your lack thereof). Also seems like having oil in your turbo could be a culprit too, just not sure if it's from seals or from PCV setup. Maybe upgrade the PCV setup, clean out the turbo and intercooler and go from there.

 

[jdab555]

B12 / other carbon cleaning products can do a solid job in freeing up stuck rings which can help with compression, that's pretty well documented. Just make sure you rotate the crank a few times over the 24 hour period and do an oil change right after (and probably another one at a short interval). It might work for you, might not but it's a cheap thing to try out.

 

[Enki]

With as much fuel as what runs down the cylinder walls, I'm not sure it would get the opportunity to do much. That said, maybe it will help OP.

*Shrug*

 

[DISIFTW]

Your compression is fine, and it’s highly unlikely you have a stuck oil control ring. You can pull the spark plugs and inspect the cylinder walls with a borescope to look for scoring but I doubt that’s your issue. Have you checked to see if there’s any oil leaking from under the car at all? Specifically where the transmission meets the engine there’s a small drain hole, if there’s any fluid or residue that could indicate your rear main seal is leaking.
B12 is mediocre at best for cleaning the valves or anything from my experience.

 

[philip B]

Well I just pulled the spark plugs and they got obvious wet oil residue on the threads, which just got replaced at 95k and I never paid attention to the OG original ones I threw out which came with the car at 70k from car max so who knows when those got changed. the old ones never seemed this bad but then again I wasn’t really looking and I may have just ignored it due to ignorance. Both farthest spark plugs on cylinder 1 and 4 were the worst. 2 and three or middle had less and were not as bad as the other 2.
Is this most likely a valve cover gasket then?
Our spark plugs I’ve noticed don’t look like they have a gasket or o rings around them which I thought they came with one or assumed they did.

Have not checked out the area around the rear main seal will give that a look.

Yea b12 option with the oil control rings was my only thinking because I wasn’t seeing any smoking issues that were obvious in other speeds and my first mods were all the precautionary mods for the mzr engine before I started adding power. I also did not take oil consumption seriously until now I’m in the middle of getting tuned and it became a red flag after doing some WOT pulls and seeing that dip stick oil drop for the third time with a full oil change.

 

[philip B]

Well I just pulled the spark plugs and they got obvious wet oil residue on the threads, which just got replaced at 95k and I never paid attention to the OG original ones I threw out which came with the car at 70k from car max so who knows when those got changed. the old ones never seemed this bad but then again I wasn’t really looking and I may have just ignored it due to ignorance. Both farthest spark plugs on cylinder 1 and 4 were the worst. 2 and three or middle had less and were not as bad as the other 2.
Is this most likely a valve cover gasket then?
Our spark plugs I’ve noticed don’t look like they have a gasket or o rings around them which I thought they came with one or assumed they did.

Have not checked out the area around the rear main seal will give that a look.

Yea b12 option with the oil control rings was my only thinking because I wasn’t seeing any smoking issues that were obvious in other speeds and my first mods were all the precautionary mods for the mzr engine before I started adding power. I also did not take oil consumption seriously until now I’m in the middle of getting tuned and it became a red flag after doing some WOT pulls and seeing that dip stick oil drop for the third time with a full oil change.

Too add to that around the edge of the valve cover looks like black soot oily film it’s not extremely bad but it’s there right around the edge like a small accumulation of dirt oil ect.

 

[philip B]

Update:
Did some borescoping, pistons look bone dry and in great shape so yall were right not much there to see. Still a lot of carbon/oil residue on spark plug hole threads yet no sign of it leaking from above into the spark plug wells so I don't know how oil would be getting into my spark plug threads like that. I did find oil on the right passenger side of the engine block on the valve cover and a path of where it looked to be leaking down and accumulating between the alternator and engine block. Ordered a valve cover gasket from rock auto and will replace it asap and see if that solves most of my oil consumption issue.

I tried to clean out the spark plug hole will some b12 and a little brush so you can see the difference in the clean thread's vs the oily threads.

 

[Enki]

Check the throttle body inlet.

 

[philip B]

I did have to take manifold/and throttle body degreased and cleaned out with the intake valves before I started the tuning process not throughly ofc just used engine degreaser and brake cleaner.

 

[philip B]

I did have to take manifold/and throttle body degreased and cleaned out with the intake valves before I started the tuning process not throughly ofc just used engine degreaser and brake cleaner.

Here’s the top of the turbo to the tmic
It wasn’t pooled but it it has quite a bit of just residue.